Tales of the Graceful One
by Galdr
Summary: *After Akzeriuth* Asch and the others headed from Belkend to the Ortion Cave to discover what Van was up to. As they were leaving, they discovered not only the cheagle original and its replica, but someone else possibly related to fomicry. [Tales of the Abyss x Breath of Fire II] (Cover Image by me)


It had been a few days since the fall of Akzieruth, a large mining town in the Malkuth territory and a few days since a small group of five left Yulia City to find out exactly what Dorian General Van Grants was up to. It consisted of a three men—one being in his late teenage years, another in his thirties and the last being in his twenties. The other two were female, one being in her early teens and the other, an adult, young woman. The first male had long, crimson colored hair, with his bangs brushed back to blend with his blood red locks. The tips of them were even darker than the rest. His eyes were cold, sharp, and emerald. He was garbed in a black outfit, symbolizing he had utmost authority in military. A dark scabbard was fastened to his left hip and a sword lied in it, with his left hand closely locked around its hilt. His name is Asch the Bloody.

The second man, the one in his twenties, had soft, pastel blond hair, spiked towards the right. His complexion was fair, and he had ocean blue eyes. He as well used the blade although not in the same style as Asch had. His name is Guy. The third male was older than them, have tan-blond hair that led down his shoulders and stopped there. He wore a teal-blue uniform that symbolized authority as well in Malkuth's military. His eyes were as red as Asch's hair, and he sported glasses to hide them. While his choice of weapon was hidden away, he was mostly a spellcaster, one who used fonic artes. His name is Jade, the Colonel of the Third Division of Malkuth's Imperial Army. They had visited Belkend first to retrieve interesting information about fomicry and soon decided to investigate OrtionCave, which was located west on the Meggiora continent. With Guy having left the group to go search and wait for Luke, the rest went ahead on the Tartarus with the God-General, Asch the Bloody, unaware of what awaited them, of course. Little did he know, the God-General was about to get a splendid surprise...

"...This is?" Natalia, Princess of Kimlasca, a blonde-haired young woman, wearing a light blue and white shirt with curled cuffs, long, white leggings and small boots, wearing brown half gloves, a brown hair band in her short, golden locks, green eyes and a bow strapped to her back, wondered as the group had journeyed through the dark, dang, cave of mirrors. "What is that?" The man with tan-blond hair, deep red eyes hidden behind glasses, wearing a teal-blue colored uniform of high recognition stepped forward, narrowing his eyes at the machine they had just discovered.

"A fomicry research facility." The Colonel, Jade, confirmed. "It seems like it's been abandoned for quite some time but..."

"The processor's still active." Asch, the God-General, pointed out. The both of them walked up towards the strange machine, glancing at it. The redhead Oracle Knight growled when his eyes read over the material printed on the screen. "This is... This covers the results the Fomicry research."

"Wonderful." Jade said acidulously, taking a look for himself. "The collected data covers a wide amount of data, , and it seems that someone tried to make a huge replica, or trying to at the very least."

"So, what? Something really big...like a house maybe?" The youngest of their group, Anise, a girl in her teens, with dark, black hair tied into two ponytails. She was wearing a pink outfit that resembled overalls in one way or another, with a whitish-lavender swallow tail tabard over her attire. It had decorated purple designs on it and silvery leggings made their way down her legs and brown shoes buckled on her feet. On her back was a tan puppet looking doll. She tilted her head in slight curiosity, her brown eyes focused on the two in front of the machine. Jade simply shook his head at her assumption. "No, something much larger than that." Everyone had their eyes on the Necromancer as he began again. "Since I was a researcher, we had theorized it was possible to make something the size of a small island."

"Wow...that's _huge_." Anise gaped softly.

Asch returned his attention back to the machine's screen, continuing to scroll through the information present and gaped when his eyes locked onto something. "What's this!? I can't believe it!" That certainly got everyone's attention.

"Wh-what is it?" Natalia staggered out.

"Look!" The redhead general pointed out, allowing everyone to see what he saw, his emerald eyes darkening. "Van is in the middle of researching the largest replica that can be produced!"

Jade's own face darkened when he read over the numbers the screen was detailing. "...Approximately 30 million kilometers? That's a tenth of Auldrant's surface."

"Something that big?" The princess of Kimlasca's voice came next. "Even if you made something that big, there would be no place to put it!"

"It looks like the collected replica manufacture data is also there. That...is the data that the Malkuth Army _should_ have disposed of." Jade inspected, narrowing his gaze at the information before him. Asch glanced over his way, the evident mixture of abstruseness and irritation present upon his features. "Did Dist steal it?"

"It would seem so. It's the destroyed information about the citizens of Hod." The Malkuth Colonel provided. "A long time ago, I had it collected so I'm sure of it."

"I'd hate to think it...but are they trying to recreate Hod by making a replica?" Natalia wondered softly and mostly to herself than anyone else.

"...I'm worried about it. Let's take this information with us." Jade said finally, approaching the machine and pressing a button to eject a fon disc from it. After that, he punched in a few more keys and shut it down. The buzzing it was making went down with it. When that was finished, Asch began leading them away when the youngest member noticed something from the corner of her eye. "Huh? Is that a cheagle?" Puzzled by her words, and suspicious by it, Jade and the rest walked over to see a brown colored cheagle sitting in a cell. Well, in fact, there were two of them.

"Oh my!" Natalia gasped. "I wonder why they're locked up in a place like this."

"It's alive." Asch stated rather bluntly. "Someone must be feeding them. One is probably a replica and the other is its original." No one seemed to hear the scowl under his breath when he mentioned the word 'replica'. Well, Jade did but the Colonel paid it no mind and said, "It seems so. They both have star-like birthmark on the same spot."

Anise tilted her head once more. "I wonder if they can breathe fire like Mieu can?" The curious Fon Master Guardian walked up to the one on the right, noticing it spewed fire, and needless to say, it almost roasted her. "Aahh! It surprised me!" She squeaked, backing away so her uniform wouldn't get burned, or for that matter, her puppet Tokunaga.

The blonde-haired archer princess knelt beside the left cheagle's cell. "I wonder if this one is the same?" The small sacred beast attempted to spew fire, but it was very small and unenthusiastically. "Oh my, this one doesn't seem as lively as the other." She concluded with a frown.

"It's common for replicas' power to deteriorate. This one must be the replica." Jade deduced.

"But Colonel...this one has a nametag on it. The one with the weak fire breath says original on it." Anise pointed out.

Jade pushed up his glasses. "Is that so?" He questioned rhetorically before going on. "When the information about the replicas was being collected, there were certainly originals that did experience side effects but..."

"Oh...side effect...? L-Like what?" The princess asked next, surprise in her tone.

"In worst cases, death. In the case of a perfect isofone, there are research results of other phenomenon occurring..." Natalia and Anise flinched at this news while Asch simply scowled to himself. A rather nagging voice in his head was complaining, and he didn't appear to like it, regardless if it was being truthful.

_No way...b-because of me...Because I was created, he's going to...?_

_Shut up, dreck._ Asch growled at the voice, more importantly, the conscience of another sitting in the back of his mind.

"No... Y-you can't mean."

"In Asch's case, he's fine. You don't need to worry." Jade offered with a light smile to the Kimlascan princess. "According to the collected replica information, the effects on the original would occur in less than ten days on inorganic material. On living things, it was even faster. Asch, who is still fine after seven years past, will be alright."

"Thank goodness."

_Yeah thank goodness..._

Asch glared mentally. The voice in his head was unfortunately his own replica, calling itself Luke. It was more so the source of his irritation. _Well, I've deteriorated enough if trash like you is worrying about me._ The other voice growled, and if he could, would have narrowed his eyes as well.

_...What did you say!?_

_You're annoying, shut up!_ Asch yelled in-thought, silencing his carbon-copy.

Anise sighed lightly. "Aah. Replicas are so difficult to understand. Is it that technique you thought of, Colonel?"

"...Yes, that's right. Although it's something I'd like to erase from my past."

"...Let's pull out." Asch insisted, turning away from the cheagles trapped in the cells. Poor things, Natalia thought to herself but stood up to eagerly follow Asch out. Anise and Jade were soon to join when something caught the redhead's attention. It also garnered the attention of his stupid replica, who was watching from his connection Asch established between them at Yulia City. _Wait, there's something there._ Luke said, his voice egging on his irritated counterpart.

_Shut up, I saw it._ The God-General growled mentally at the idiot, looking just beyond the machine Jade shut down previously. "Something's there..." His right hand quickly assumed the hilt of his sword as he and the others slowly approached the source of the strange feeling he was getting. It looked like someone was there, watching them closely, possibly a spy. Whoever they were, they were about to be on the end of his wrath. "Who are you? Show yourself!" Asch shouted, removing his sword and pointing it in front of him, exactly where the source was, or what he felt it was. Anise, Natalia and Jade readied themselves for anything, but what had come from out of nowhere was something they hadn't expected.

It was a leg.

Not just any leg, but a slender, woman's leg, had fallen from behind a relatively suspicious mirror rock. Why hadn't they seen that before? They had bypassed it as if it hadn't existed. "The hell...?" The redhead God-General wondered as he cautiously walked towards the rock, then noticed something was behind it and looked. If this weren't a serious situation, he would have turned away, but he couldn't get his eyes off the very thing before him. "Asch, what is it?" Natalia asked as she rounded the small corner alcove and froze when she saw what he did. Jade and Anise followed suit, the youngest gasping while the Colonel remained calm. But, deep down, he was most likely confronting all his emotions at once.

It was a young woman, possibly the same age as Asch, maybe younger. She had long, elegant pale blonde hair that ended just at her rear, the top portion lightly spiked outwards like a U-shape. Her long bangs and curls wrapped upon her bare shoulders, barely hiding her round ears. Her skin was pale and the dimming light of Ortion Cave was giving it a rather ominous and beautiful glow at the same time. What concerned them the most was that she had the darkest and largest wings in existence, which both were outspread and untamed. She herself was slightly curled up in a fetal position, her face contorted with a mixture of worry, rejection, pain and suffering, and not to mention, she was as bare as a skinned chicken. There was not a strip of clothing on this girl!

"Wh-what?! Who is she?" Anise cried.

"Was she always here? And Asch, Jade! It's rude to stare!" Natalia scolded. Said redhead sighed and politely looked away which also hid his burning red face to match his hair from his fiancé, the princess. Unfortunately, the Colonel kept his eyes on the unconscious woman and approached her. Kneeling down, he lifted one of her wrists, checking for a pulse. "It seems she's still alive." The Malkuth resident provided.

"Oh th-that's good, but how did she get those wings? Nobody has wings like those!"

"Fomicry." Asch half hissed under his breath. He got the attention of Anise and Natalia easily, who caught wind of his words.

"What do you mean, Asch...? I thought fomicry was used to create replicas?" Natalia.

"Y-yeah, that's what I thought too." Anise.

"It is." Jade began. "...However, someone must have used fomicry on this woman with another being, possibly a bird or a monster in the avian category, at the same time. There could have been a malfunction that caused this mutation on her body. They may have attempted to make a replica of both the woman and the bird. That's just my educated guess at the moment. I can't be too sure unless it's looked at carefully."

"So what do we do?" The black-haired Fon Master Guardian wondered hopefully.

"We just can't leave her here to die! I say we take her with us." Natalia volunteered worriedly.

The redhead looked her way, frowning. "Natalia, we don't have time to be saving people. Besides, she could be a replica of the original."

"Asch!" Natalia snapped angrily.

"...Fine... But she's going to need something over her, you know, and I'm not carrying her."

"Well, I guess we can put her on Tokunaga then." Anise suggested, just to avoid Jade's snide, sarcastic comment that would have came. "Natalia, she seems like your height, maybe you have an extra pair of clothes...?"

"Ah, y-yes I do, but how would we get her wings in them without hurting or waking her?"

"Don't worry ladies, the problem's been solved." Jade answered, now carrying the unconscious woman in a rather unfitting, tattered rag of a sheet cover. "It looks like she had been in a cell for a long time and managed to get out. There were old sheets on the bed in there, so, that solves our problem." He smiled casually. Anise sighed, but couldn't resist a giggle. The frail woman in his arms and the way she was clutching his uniform was just too cute and adorable!

"Oohhh Colonel! I think she likes you!" Anise taunted in a sing-song voice. Jade made a slight note of the contact but didn't truly mind at all.

"Ah, yes. Well now, shall we be going? I'd rather take her to Belkend for an appointment with the doctors there."

Asch rolled his eyes but relented anyway. "Very well then, let's go." Apparently he'd have to stick around with them for awhile longer than necessary. If that person was related to fomicry in a way, then the Necromancer and the researchers at the Fon Machine Lab in Belkend were the people to see for professional assistance.

* * *

This won't last long; just a light fan-fic to keep me from stressing out and all. You know how light manga are in which they have one or two volumes? This'll be like that. Not too long. I won't spend so much time on this as I've got three important stories to do but that won't mean I'll abandon this. I like it. Review if you wish.


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